


Theodicy

by manic_intent



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel Dean Winchester, Angst and self hatred and all that, Belief systems, Car Sex, Disclaimer: Author is not religious, Godstiel: Cas as God, M/M, utter stubbornness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 19:32:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As before, as now, as it will be again, the first significant Act of Creation by God shall be to forge <i>l'hosif-or</i>, his best-beloved, the Morning's Star, the one who shall bring the seeds of light into dark places and fan them to flame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Theodicy

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I guess I'll combine my Lucifer ficbunny with the Godstiel ones. I'm actually rather fond of the Godstiel trope, as well as the Angel!Dean one. This plotbunny was semi raised from a vague sense of nothing thanks to tanarill, who mentioned in passing: "The root verb l'hosif does not mean 'to bring.' It means 'to add to' or 'to multiply.' Thus, Lucifer (l'hosif-or) doesn't translate to 'bringer of light,' but 'to multiply [the] light'. And yes, the word 'or' does indeed mean 'light'; also, it still carries all the metaphorical extra meanings in Hebrew."

**theodicy** (θɪˈɒdɪsɪ)  
 **— n , pl -cies**  
has no set definition, but it usually refers to an attempt to reconcile the evidential problem of evil with God's traditional characteristics of omnibenevolence, omnipotence and omniscience (all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing).

x

Time walks eternally in a circle, Her chosen story one single cycle that spans and winds the ages before it twists back to Her Beginning, which is this-

The Ending comes in fire and rain and sixty-six shattered signs, exit stage left. 

The Beginning awakens in theft and the spiralling path of good intentions, enter stage right, as the birth of the God of All Things, and as before, as now, as it will be again, His first significant Act of Creation shall be to forge _l'hosif-or_ , his best-beloved, the Morning's Star, the one who shall bring the seeds of light into dark places and fan them to flame, the one who shall start the arc that would end in the birth of the cycle to come.

x

Becoming an angel turns out to be the most fucking painful ordeal of Dean's life. 

Cas - Castiel - _God_ \- has him pinned on a steel gurney with nothing but his Will holding him down, cutting slips and slivers off Dean's fucking _soul_ , welding them back together over his back, constructing a pair of shimmering, translucent goddamned _wings_. He's done with the bones and the sinew, and it's around when Castiel is layering on the feathers, piece by piece, ignoring how Dean sobs and thrashes and claws at the steel, that Dean finally breaks and begs him to stop.

"You've been through Hell," Castiel tells him calmly, even as he slices another piece off Dean's soul and shapes it into a perfect, round feather, slots it into place with a careful touch, almost obscenely gentle. "This is nothing, Dean. Endure."

"I don't want this," Dean repeats hoarsely, his cheek's wet with tears and spittle and there's bile lodged in his throat. "Cas, _please_ , Cas."

"Shh. Shh. It'll be over soon," Castiel assures him, though his eyes are cool and enigmatic, and his hands don't even fucking waver. "You'll be beautiful, Dean. More beautiful than you are now."

"I don't want this," Dean hisses, though he flinches as his fingers abruptly punch through the steel, blinking in astonishment, before he realizes. He's already getting stronger.

When he tries jerking at Castiel's bindings, he only makes God chuckle, though, and frightened, exhausted with pain, and desperate to keep his soul, Dean tries the next thing on his mind. He waits till Castiel is carefully Shaping a blob of light into a long flight feather the span of the room, and bites down hard on his teeth and closes his eyes. He's never done this before, hell, he's not even sure if it's possible, but even as Dean tries to visualize his soul, he sees it, at the back of his mind, a battered, sundered thing, pulsing and weak. He shakes as he cuts away part of it, but it doesn't hurt, not the way Castiel's touch has hurt, and quickly, Dean buries it as deeply as he can inside himself.

Castiel doesn't seem to notice, humming gently, soothingly, as Dean just lies on the gurney for the rest of the procedure as though the fight's gone out of him.

After everything, when Dean's standing on wobbly feet, his new wings a perfect, hated lightshow of luminously soft feathers in every shade of white and gold, spanning the operating room and beyond, brilliant slices of light cut into the very fabric of reality. Castiel strokes his cheek, a warm smile curled on his lips where his eyes are still as empty as ever. 

"Beautiful," he says, and a small voice deep within Dean, from the hidden fragment of his soul, whispers _bastard_. Castiel doesn't react, and Dean thinks, all of a sudden, weak with relief, _he can't hear me. He can't hear me_. 

"I guess," Dean whispers, his voice long torn to rags, then he coughs as Castiel strokes fingers down his throat and mends him, taking the pain away, smiling indulgently as Dean shakes out his wings, mistaking the stunned horror with which Dean regards every feather Shaped from his very soul for wonder.

"We have much work to do. Admire yourself another day." There's amusement there, and it takes all of Dean's self-control to keep from slugging the smug bastard.

"Can't I see Sam first?" It doesn't need much to sound pleading. "You took his wall down, Cas. I need to see if he's all right."

"I put it back before I remade you. Sam is fine," Castiel, however, tilts his head when Dean’s wings droop down in disappointment. "Very well. You may have an hour."

"A day," Dean counters, and when Castiel narrows his eyes, grits out, "Please."

"Don't test my patience," Castiel reaches over, to run a palm over the curve of Dean's right wing, and then he smiles again when Dean shivers and gasps, wound between pain and pleasure. The wings feel almost painfully sensitive, like skin spun raw by a beating, and he blinks as the individual soul-feather-fragments curl and wrap around Castiel's hand, like dozens of weird, touch-starved fingers, and it makes him feel sick, deep down, somehow.

"You've closed yourself off for too long," Castiel explains, when he glances over at Dean's thinned lips and set jaw. "Your soul misses a gentle touch."

"I don't think it's technically meant to be able to literally touch anything," Dean bites out, twitching his wings away and shuffling them behind his back, but Castiel merely chuckles again.

"They're extensions of your true self, Dean. All the more perfect now that they're visible. And they do know what you truly need. You may have your day. After that, find me in Heaven, and do not be late."

 _Bastard_ , the final fragment of Dean's soul whispers, louder this time, and he shivers.

x

"Just take care of my poor baby," Dean tells Sam again, for the fourth time, as they sit against the wrecked shell of the Impala in Bobby's scrap yard. "I'll be back to fix her up in no time." 

"Sure, Dean," Sam eyes him doubtfully, his gaze tracking back repeatedly to the huge wings fanned through the car, the ground, and the walls of the shed behind them. Sam can't see their colours - Castiel had warned Dean about manifesting them in full before 'humans' - but Dean hasn't quite figured out how to hide it all yet, and apparently Sam can see their shadows. "Are you... are you going to be all right?"

"I'm a freaking _angel_ now, Sammy. Sure I'll be fine." Dean jerks his thumb at his wings and smiles like he means it. It feels like forever since Hell, and he's learned how to keep it seamless-

"You don't feel like one to me," Sam notes wryly, not fooled in the least. "I mean, you're still all... _Dean_. Just with wings. You don't seem, well, soulless like the angels are. And believe me, I know what to look out for. Been there, done that, right?"

"Yeah, about that," Dean hesitates, then he decides against telling Sam about it, just in case Castiel does a little mind stalking. "Maybe I'm just too stubborn to quit being me."

"Maybe," Sam shakes his head, slowly. "Everything sure fucked up, didn't it? I still think that maybe... maybe we could have talked Cas out of it. If we'd only gotten to him earlier."

"Maybe," Dean echoes, though he doubts it. Castiel's a stubborn creature, and once he gets it in his mind that doing something is 'right'... well. Dean doesn't doubt that this very stubbornness was why Dean got pulled out of Hell in the first place - Castiel probably just didn't know when to quit. Like now. 

"So you've got a day off before you're going to be his... his general, or soldier, or servant or whatever it is," Sam chugs a gulp of his beer, "And you don't want to spend it researching."

"There's nothing in the books. Bobby's already said that." Dean's already on his third bottle, and he can't feel tipsy any longer, which would once upon another life have been awesome, but now simply sucked major balls. "And there's nothing else I'll rather do on my last day."

Sammy's shoulders hunch, like he's about to argue, but then he sighs and downs his bottle. "Bobby and I will keep trying," he promises, like he isn't sure whether he should be. "There has to be a way to reverse it, or something. Maybe... maybe we'll speak to Death."

"Don't get in over your head, Sam." Dean warns, wings twitching over to his shoulders, unsettled. "The way Cas is now, I really don't think that he's going to be very forgiving."

"Dean," Sam glances at him, his eyes narrowed, "He's _cut up your soul_ , man. I can't just... I can't just take that lying down."

"Yeah, well," Dean chokes up for a moment, which he covers by getting another bottle from the cooler box between them, "Just leave it for now, all right?" _I've just got this one day, Sammy_ , he wants to add, but it was going to sound weird no matter how he parses it, like he’s walking towards an electric chair. Working for Castiel isn’t going to be a death sentence, after all. 

Hopefully.

Sam seems to get it, though - he nods, even if he sucks in a sharp breath, then he slides a fraction down against the concrete, further. "So you don't want me to take the Impala to a mechanic?"

Dean swallows some beer the wrong way, and starts coughing; Sam laughs at him, loud and genuine, like he's _Sammy_ again, like Robo-Sam's just a small and bad memory in the past, as though the past few years hadn't ever happened, and maybe, just maybe, things were going to be worthwhile after all.

The thought lasts for only a moment, up until his wings stretch out a little too far, and something mechanical on the workbench behind them fizzles and sparks and smokes. Sam winces, and Dean tries not to curl up into himself, and he thinks, _at least I can still feel anger_. He holds on to the bright-hard edge of his simmering temper, and wraps it close to the core of his soul, wills himself never to forget.

x

His wings know how to find Castiel. It's a weird thing to contemplate, and fucking creepy, if he thinks too much about it, but maybe it's because they know Castiel is their maker, or something, but he can feel them warm up and tingle when he pops out onto into a warm afternoon day. 

If he separates the wings as a sub-entity, his head hurts a little less. It's like he has a Castiel radar stapled to his back, or some other, less-than-sentient, doglike creature that sort of shares some of his mindspace, like a parasite, and he can feel how much it wants to be shaken out into the air, to feel the sun, the wind. How it wants to curl over his shoulders and his arms, to take him anywhere he wants to go, how it wants to be _helpful_. 

How much it fucking wants Castiel to touch it.

He forces the big damn things to fold up behind him, and then Dean blinks. All around him, the verdant grass is charred in vast stretches of gigantic wings, all spanning from countless bodies, sprawled in various contortions of final agony on the ground, and for a long moment, Dean's mind just goes blank: he can't comprehend the _scale_ of this, the enormity of it all-

"They were our enemies," Castiel speaks calmly, behind him, and Dean has to swallow hard and clench his fists. He's so angry that his eyes are stinging. He's never liked most of the angels, except maybe Anna, before when she went ballistic on him, or Castiel, before he got all soul-eater-power-hungry, but he's pretty sure that most of the dead at his feet didn't deserve this.

"This is mass murder, Castiel."

"You're upset." Castiel circles around to look at him, and the angel moves weirdly now. Frowning, it takes Dean a moment to parse it, then it clicks. Castiel no longer walks like he used to, all Jimmy Novak's muscle memory. He _glides_ , every step soft and seamless, every movement fluid with grace. It's disturbing as all hell, like watching clockwork. "They would have killed you."

"Would they? All of them? Or did you just take it out on every poor fucking angel that followed Raphael?"

"I had to negate the opposition." Castiel replies flatly.

"Did you think that maybe, just maybe, a lot of them were just following Raphael because that's all that they'd ever done?" Dean shoots back hotly, "Because he's stronger than all of them? You were like them once!"

"I evolved. They should have."

"They didn't ever get the chance!"

"I've killed my brothers for you before, Dean," Castiel frowns, but his tone remains patient, like Dean is being a fucking child over a goddamned _genocide_. "You had no objections before."

"There's a difference between fighting for your life or defending a friend and killing hundreds of people just because they don't agree with you," Dean points out flatly. "Hundreds of people who can't fight _back_ because they're weaker than you."

"Angels aren't people."

"Yeah," Dean mutters bitterly, looking away, "Don't I fucking know it."

"Dean," Castiel's tone is gentle as he curls his fingers over Dean's shoulder, over the brand under his jacket, and seems to ignore how Dean flinches at his touch. "Calm down."

"Why did you make me into an angel, Cas?" Dean tries to jerk away, and nearly pulls his arm out of his own socket. "Did you really think that I was going to fall on my knees and kiss your feet?" 

"Well," Castiel smiles then, wryly, "I suppose I should have known differently."

 _Asshole_ , the little voice in Dean spits, but he knows better than to say it, and there's a little curl of fear around his spine at how close he'd come to being totally remade into Castiel's shiny new lapdog. "Funny how I haven't gotten the axe, seeing how you're going all Lizzy Borden on all your siblings."

"I love you, Dean," Castiel snaps his fingers, and the gardens are pristine again, with no trace of the genocide that had just taken place. "All that I have done, I have done for you. And now you are perfect. As you were meant to be."

Dean scowls. Castiel's words make his stomach flip and twist into ugly knots, but his wings flare involuntarily, invitingly, and he hates them with a seething fury that surprises even himself. For a moment, they freeze, then they fold up against his back, almost contrite, and Dean frowns at them, confused. That had almost been like-

"They're part of you," Castiel tells him, as Dean cranes his neck over his shoulder. "They _are_ you. The unvarnished part of you, your essence. Your soul. Angels are constructed from the same energy."

"Funny how I didn't explode," Dean drawled, recalling Bobby and the Wild West adventure. 

So the wings are sort of his ID, or, as he's beginning to think of them, Stupid-Dean. The manifestation of the part of him that liked to drink beer until he passed out or crack terrible pick up lines at blonde bombshells in bars, maybe. Great. At least he now had something solid to hate on. Under his stare, the wings wilt further, as though they’d heard the sentiment, feathers drooping down into the grass, twitching and curling their tips anxiously against the stalks.

"I was only an angel then," Castiel explains, untroubled.

"So, am I the only angel left?" Dean asks sourly, looking around the perfect garden. "And how come I'm not the size of the Chrysler building?"

"If you want to assume another form, you may. But I prefer this semblance," Castiel nods at him. "The celestial forms are imperfect in their own ways. Also, you are not the only seraph remaining."

Dean isn't entirely sure if he wants to know what he looks like with three heads and eight arms or whatever, but he nearly indulges in the knee-jerk impulse to do it anyway. "Where's everyone else?"

"Thinking things over. As they should be." Castiel smiles at him. "I thought that you would like to observe what I will do next with humanity."

"Wait. You're going to what?"

"There are far too many who do ill in my name," Castiel makes a sweeping gesture. "I shall chastise them."

"You mean, the way you've 'chastised' the angels?" Dean feels sick all over again. "Cas, you can't _do_ that." 

"I can," Castiel notes. "Easily."

"I mean, yeah, you have the power to do it, but you shouldn't," Dean adds quickly, racking his brain as Castiel tilts his head at him. "Look, um, a lot of people are little shits, all right? I agree. But that doesn't mean that you should kill them. I mean, you're God now, right? You're meant to be all forgiving and..." And Castiel's eyebrows are arching, as though to remind Dean that his first step in Heaven was to tread on some angels' ashes. "Moving along," Dean muttered, "Look. Statistically, you do want lots of followers, right?"

"Worshippers, yes."

"Then believe me, the people who are going to sing your praises the loudest, are going to be the crazy ones. And what better authenticity is there than to get some crazy people to change their minds, right? I mean, if you just kill them, the police are just going to write it off as a serial killer going crazy. If you want to convert people, you're going to have to work miracles." Dean is babbling now, and he knows it, but he can't stop himself. "I saw this bus once, um, funded by some atheists, it read 'If God Exists, What's His Excuse?' and you've got to, you've got to think about that, don't you?"

"You don't want me to kill," Castiel muses, as if he just realizes this.

"Exactly!" Dean sucks in another quick breath. "Look. If you're really, really 'doing this for me', then you won't go on a mass murder rampage. Because that's never going to be okay with me, Cas. The whole point about fighting Michael, hell, about getting Sammy pushed into the pit? It was to save the world. Even the bits of it I don't like."

Castiel seems to consider this silently for a while more, then he nods. "You are indeed the Righteous Man, Dean Winchester. Very well. I will heed your counsel for now."

Dean slumps in relief. "All right. Good." Baby steps.

x

It takes a lot of experimentation before Dean finally figures out how to pull his wings all the way inward, or at least enough to stop shit from fizzing out whenever he's close by. It turns out that being the Heavenly equivalent of the Teacher's Pet is a full time job and then some, or at least once the surviving angels clue in to the fact that Dean really, really doesn't want them burned to ashes. 

"So you're like, the Angel CEO," Sammy thinks that it's so fucking funny. "You."

Dean growls, from where he's curled inside the Impala, trying to carefully hammer out dents in its shell without punching holes through the metal. Castiel had frowned at him and had offered to handwave his baby better, but had shrugged when Dean had stumbled over himself to refuse the offer. The Impala deserved more than an afterthought.

And the little voice within him sure as hell didn't want his baby to be juiced up by stolen souls.

"Yeah, and you know what? They have questions all the goddamned time." 

"About what?" Sam asks, fascinated. Sammy's meant to be helping by supplying beer and tools, but he's been more interested in Dean's forays into angelic management strategies.

"Rules? Work? Assignments? It's a fun fucking factory up there," Dean mutters. To think that general human propaganda tended to describe golden cities and choirs and clouds and shit. Lies. All lies.

"Delegate, then."

"I've tried. But I think the fact that I'm the only angel who Cas most probably won't smite if he gets irritable has gotten to them." Not to mention that angels weren't very good at initiative in the first place.

"And what's Cas doing?"

"Haven't you been watching the tv?" Dean rubs hard at a particularly stubborn dent, and curses as he accidentally presses his damned _fingerprints_ into the metal. "Fuck!"

Sam peers briefly at what he's done, then he snorts. "Seems like a lot of evangelicals and faith leaders are changing their tunes."

"Yeah. I got him to perform some miracles, things like that."

"So no one gets hurt." Sam grins. "Good job."

Dean shudders, and he can feel his wings shifting, between reality and not-reality, for want of a better descriptive, but he silently tells them to stay freaking _put_. He isn't sure what sort of damage they'd do if they went through the new engine right now. "Wasn't easy."

"Since when were things easy?" Sam asks, comfortably. "You know, this isn't so bad-"

"Sammy..."

"I mean, other than what he did to the angels," Sam adds, clearly determined to bull through his point, "He's just been healing the blind and correcting a lot of the religion-based hate speech and stuff. I mean, if you turned him loose in Africa, he'll be able to fix the hunger problem, maybe."

"Heal the world?" Dean drawls facetiously, even as he smooths out another dip and dent. "Cure lepers? Regrow the Amazon rainforest? We're talking about a guy who just went all Texas chainsaw on any one of his _siblings_ who looked at him funny, Sammy." 

"Well, yeah," Sam rolls his shoulders, undeterred. "I mean, he's done with that, and he's God now. He has to do something next, right? And there's a hell of a lot wrong with the world that people aren't ever going to fix, not immediately. He could, like, stop the mass rapes in the Congo. Fix the failed states. Free North Korea."

Sammy was always so painfully convinced of the innate _niceness_ of certain people despite all evidence to the fucking contrary.

"And then?" Dean shoots back, "Where does it stop? If Cas and his feathery friends - who don't have souls, I might add - become the global police? Who decides what's right and what's wrong? 'Sides, a lot of the... problems that you've described, can't really be fixed by angels either. You want to keep smiting 'bad people' until there's nothing left? Who's going to run the country? Cas? Someone he picks? That ain't right, either."

"He could still build infrastructure with a snap of his fingers," Sam disagrees. "Feed and empower the poor. It'll go a long way to solving things." When Dean mutters rudely under his breath, Sam adds, "I'm just saying, okay, I agree. Cas should never have taken in all this souls, period. But it's been done. And if he can be nudged into saving thousands of kids who'd otherwise die of hunger-related causes everyday, I don't think that's a bad thing."

"Going to be a hard sell."

"It'll keep him occupied," Sam points out. "It's a big world, with a lot of big problems. If he's working on solving the poverty gap, maybe he won't take it into his mind to go on another smitefest."

"I'll raise it with him," Dean concedes, because as much as he hates it, Sam maybe has a point there. Maybe they shouldn't so much focus on how to undo things as to shift into damage control, at least for now. Channel all of that crazy power somewhere useful. "And since when were you such a freaking hippie, anyway?"

Sam snorts at him, but Dean knows that at least where little kids and vulnerable people are involved, Sammy has always been a goddamned hippie. Maybe it comes with the height: bigger-than-average people tended to be gentler by default, careful with their strength.

"But that doesn't mean we should stop trying," Dean continues gruffly, as he feels the bloody wings start shifting uncomfortably again at his back. "Because he's still a disaster waiting to happen. Again."

"All right, Dean," Sam sighs. "We'll keep looking."

"Sammy-"

"I haven't forgotten what he did to you, Dean. What he did to Balthazar, to the other angels, what he did to _me_. Don't worry." 

"I _am_ going to worry," Dean grunts as he works out another dent, "If he finds out, he'll get his smite on. And besides, you think that it's a waste."

"Are you reading my mind?"

"Don't need to read your mind, Sam." Dean had tried the telepathy trick a day or so ago, on a random passer-by in Central Park, and had come away mentally scarred, never able to look at rubber duckies the same way again. People, seriously, had the weirdest fucking fetishes.

Literally.

"Well, okay. I think that it could be a waste. But I agree that we need some sort of failsafe if he goes out of control. I'm thinking that we should contact Crowley. Also, I really don't think Cas is going to hurt us," Sam adds. "He fixed my mind, didn't he? And I kind of stuck an angel killing blade through him, just before."

"He knew the blade wasn't going to kill him. But if you do find out how to get the job done," Dean glances up at his brother, soberly, "I really doubt that he's going to be forgiving."

x

Dean stands behind a tree as he watches Adam walk onto campus in the University of Minnesota, and feels a little bit like a creeper. Maybe this is what Castiel used to feel like. Could be an angel thing. 

If he starts wearing park flasher trenchcoats, he's going to stab himself. 

"Adam is well," Castiel observes, from just behind him, and Dean actually _jumps_ , startled. 

Ever since the angel makeover, he's gotten sort of used to having an additional set of senses, sort of like the seraph version of invisible feelers. Angel whiskers. He can sense other angels approaching, or people, demons, anything. But Castiel - Castiel steps outside reality itself. It's disconcerting as hell.

"Yeah." Dean clears his throat, turning. "Thanks." Castiel had raised Adam from the cage, soul included, and had fixed him up. Adam didn't remember anything, which was probably better for him, and Dean had managed to fix up a college fund by misusing some of his new angel mojo on a Swiss bank account.

"Set one of the angels to watch over him, if you wish. He _is_ still one of Michael's vessels."

"I will." Dean's already had one of the angels in mind, a surprisingly sweet-natured angel called Esther. Seems not all angels are dicks. Especially the lower tier ones.

"Did you have any other requests?" Castiel asks, indulgent where he had once been attentive, and Dean digs his fingers into his palms, fights a stuttered breath when his throat clenches. 

He's seen Castiel drunk, disillusioned, drugged out of his mind and jaded, angry, depressed, everything in between, and this is worse, somehow, worse than even the broken shell trapped in the future. There's a pervasive sense of _wrongness_ around Castiel like a cloak, and even as his skin crawls to think about it, his bloody wings fluff and drift, primaries curling towards Castiel like plants angling for the sunlight. He glares at them, and they shuffle awkwardly back into place.

"Can't control the damned things," he tells Castiel, when his 'God' tilts his head at him.

"I know." Castiel's lips quirk briefly. "It is quite... 'adorable', I believe the word is."

Dean chokes, has to cough, and then he settles for scowling when Castiel laughs at him, each rough chuckle rolling and perfect in pitch, all clockwork. "I was thinking that you could go global," he mutters. "Solve the hunger problem in third world countries, for example."

"Fix all of humanity's problems?"

"... I guess?"

Castiel shakes his head, and Dean blinks at him. "Why?"

"Why?" Dean repeats, startled. "What? What do you mean, 'why'? You're _God_."

"God does not exist to coddle his creations, Dean. I understand that now." Castiel replies calmly.

"You've been healing the blind and the sick, haven't you?"

"As a necessary step. Miracles are required to cement my reputation. Think about it, Dean," Castiel added, when Dean bristled, wings and all. "If I were to heal the sick - all the sick - then what would your doctors do? If I were to feed the poor and raise them up, then what incentive would there be for humans to better themselves? To work and be fruitful?" 

"I wasn't going to suggest turning the entire world into a welfare state," Dean growled, "Just feed some kids who're going to starve to death right this moment if you don't."

"You could do that, if you wanted," Castiel pointed out mildly. "Make the ground fruitful. Create crops. I have given you the means."

True. Well. So much for Sammy's grand plan to Keep Castiel Occupied Forever By Orchestrating World Peace. "Fine," Dean snaps, because he can't really think of an alternative right now, not when he's fighting to keep control of his feathers, and he gets his wings to take him to Africa.

A confused, short time later, when the buffalo herd had edged off into a safe distance to watch him with mild animal terror, Castiel reappears next to him. "The hunger crises are most prevalent in the Horn of Africa, Dean," he notes helpfully. 

"Right. Where are we?"

"The Okavango Delta. This is something that you saw from 'National Geographic' when you were twenty-two and walking past an electronics store."

Dean has the distinct feeling that Castiel is trying very hard not to laugh - 'God's mouth keeps twitching. "You think that this is funny?"

"I am amused, yes." When Dean scowls, Castiel bloody _chuckles_. "I will make the changes, Dean. For now. But I am not here to save humanity from itself. Humans must fix their own problems."

"Then what are you here for?" Dean growls, before he can stop himself, and Castiel's amusement smoothes away to his blank mask.

"I may have chosen to serve you before, Dean," Castiel's tone is neutral now, "But now, I am God, and you should serve _me_. You, and humanity, and the other angels. _Am I clear_?"

The ground shakes and rumbles, and the buffalo herd whirls and stampedes away in a panic, bellowing in fright. Dean inhales sharply, taking a step back, wings flaring in alarm, and abruptly, the choking presence of sheer power is gone, swept down, and Castiel looks away. 

"You always push me, Dean."

"It's kind of my thing," Dean concedes weakly.

"You're afraid of me. You weren't afraid of me, before. Except for the first time that you met me." Castiel seems... unhappy, Dean realizes, for all that he hasn't changed expression or his tone. "I don't want you to be afraid."

"That's going to be hard," Dean noted warily, "What with you being God and all."

"Had I wanted to kill you before, when I was still an angel, I could have," Castiel frowns, at the browned grass beneath their feet. "Even when I had Fallen, I was still far more powerful than you could have imagined. What changed?"

"You're asking _me_?" Dean demanded, incredulous. "You swallowed a ton of souls from Purgatory, Cas, to become something that you shouldn't. You tore down Sam's wall. You cut up my soul. You've killed more angels than I can count, within just a _day_... you would have done it to scores of people too, if I hadn't convinced you not to-"

"This is why I need you, Dean," Castiel interrupts, and this time, when he looks up to hold Dean's eyes, there's something raw in his gaze, even though his tone is unchanged. "You've always been my conscience. Angels weren't made with an... innate sense of morality. Humans were, with their souls - you've seen how Sam was without his."

"Then you should have come to me from the start instead of to Crowley."

"Perhaps."

"And," Dean adds, before he can help it, "You shouldn't have fucking torn up my soul and made it wing-shaped."

"Not all of it," Castiel observes calmly, and when Dean freezes, he shakes his head. "Did you truly think that I would not notice, Dean? I allowed you to keep it. And even had I not noticed at the start... were you a true angel, you would not persist in asking me to 'do the right thing'."

"Well, you're being bloody difficult about it," Dean mutters, resisting the instinctive urge to fold his wings around himself, he's that unsettled. "And I thought that you wanted a Stepford angel."

"I did, at first. But then I'll have just another angel. I wouldn't have _you_." Castiel smiles, a small, tight smile, and it looks far more genuine than anything Dean has seen since the whole fucking business with Purgatory. "Perhaps my continuous and irrational attachment to you is still ill-conceived."

"It didn't stop you from hurting me."

"I know. I was angry, when you refused to bow down before me." Castiel sighs. "I reacted poorly. Can you not forgive me? I've done all that you've asked of me, since. And I did this for you, Dean."

Dean's shocked by the sheer fucking _balls_ of that statement, at first, blindsided, and then he's so furious that he feels like his blood is boiling, his wings are mantling aggressively, and his hands are clenched so tight that they hurt. Castiel wants _forgiveness_? And he's still, for fuck's sake, trying to pin it all on _Dean_?

"Not bloody likely," Dean snarls, too angry for diplomacy, and wills himself back to Bobby's scrapyard.

Castiel doesn't follow him, and Sam, who's reading a book next to the Impala, falls off his chair in shock when Dean growls and punches a fist through the nearest wall.

"The hell?" Sam frowns, as he picks himself up. "What happened? And, uh, why do you smell of-"

Dean cleans up with a gesture, vaguely thankful that he - or the wings - remembered to go into stealth mode when he'd popped up into the shed. "Don't ask." 

"The tools are on the bench," Sam notes, apparently deciding to drop it for now, "And there's beer in that cooler."

x

Arid and barren lands become fertile again, the UN and all the major news networks seem to go into collective newsgasms, and a vaguely hippie religious fervour seems to be gripping the nation. People being people, however, there's always going to be something weird about it, and Dean grimaces on his way out of a coffee shop in Sioux Falls at the sight of Sheriff Mills dressing down a bunch of naked people holding 'THE LORD IS RAPTURE' signs written in pink lipstick. 

Shiny, glittery lipstick.

In the end, the naked people shuffle off, if defiantly, hopefully to get some pants, and Mills spots him by how he's trying really badly to swallow his sniggering and marches over. "Dean, was it?"

"Uh. Yeah. Heya. Sheriff." 

"I'm not going to bite you," Mills looks vaguely harassed. "At least you've still got your pants on."

"Little mercies," Dean croaks, because he was drinking when she'd made that throwaway comment and now he's burned his tongue. The grace stitched into his back makes it go away immediately, though, and he almost hates it for that too. It's almost like becoming less and less human, each day that he keeps forgetting that the wings on his back shouldn't ever be there, forgets what they're made of. 

"So. The apocalypse's been averted, and now we've got new management," Mills leans against the wall of the corner shop, beside him, arms folded firmly over her chest. "He's been cleaning up."

"Don't I know it," Dean mutters, but Mills doesn't seem to catch on.

"Seems like he's better than the last guy, who was never around."

"You think so?"

"He made all those farms grow in Africa, didn't he?" Mills shrugged, "And he's gotten all the crazies to stop harping about how gay people are unnatural and crash soldiers' funerals. It's looking good so far, to me."

"Although with naked people toting lipstick signs."

"I'll happily handle some naked people over reading about starving kids dying in the papers," Mills grins, and Dean realizes that for all that the Sheriff is a little pinched around the eyes, she's _happy_. Glowing. Frowning, he looks around them, and there does seem to be a little less of the pall that he'd always sensed around Sioux Falls, ever since the incident with Death's message.

"Folks are picking themselves up," Mills follows his gaze. "People have been thinking that it was worth it, after all." 

"People got on fine before, with the other guy."

"I guess," Mills nods, "But it's nice to know that the new guy cares."

"He doesn't care, Sheriff," Dean bursts out, even though he knows that he shouldn't. "He's just doing this for... for the worship. Attention."

"Well," Mills narrowed her eyes slightly, "If he keeps feeding the hungry and reining in the crazy, he has my attention. What's wrong with you, Dean?" 

"Nothing," Dean mumbles. He's gone too far. "Just a bit out of sorts. See you later, Sheriff."

He complains to Bobby once he's home, and when Bobby only snorts and waves him away, picking up a ringing phone, Dean goes to find Sam to sulk.

"I mean, it's like everyone thinks that the ends justify the means," he complains, as Sam scrutinizes the tracks in the muddy damp of the forest. Sam's taken to driving out on hunts alone, and calling Dean only when he needs help. Things have been quiet - the demons and all the things that walked in the dark were lying low. 

"Maybe it does," Sam notes distractedly. "This was probably a bear."

"Skinwalker, actually," Dean says, without thinking about it, because his wings just _know_ , somehow, and he shudders. "I did it again, didn't I?"

"Yeah. But thanks." Sam starts to follow the tracks. "So. You were saying?"

"I spoke to Mills. She's a fan of the New Management."

"Lots of people are." 

"Well, they shouldn't be!"

"He hasn't been doing anything but good, lately." Sam shrugs. "Crime's gone way down. Lots of charities have been starting up."

"Only because people want to earn brownie points with the Big Bad Wolf," Dean points out, irritable. He knows what people are like. "Now that brownie points actually do seem to count for fuck and the class teacher is back."

"And that's still a bad thing, because...?"

Dean starts, stops, starts again, then he sighs. "Sammy..."

Sam ignores him. Traitor. "Weren't you meant to be running things in Heaven?"

"Right now?" Dean scowls, "Right now I feel like getting my smite on. Let's find this skinwalker."

x

When he finally mans up and slinks back Upstairs, Castiel is waiting for him when he touches down in the Garden of Eden. It's still picture perfect for the Cleveland Botanical Gardens, minus raucous schoolkids and pretty, giggling Milly Brown, and it's still creepy as all hell. Joshua's made himself scarce as usual - the Gardener is supposed to be neutral, apparently, but the angel seems to prefer to avoid Castiel 2.0, and if that doesn't fundamentally underscore how wrong Castiel is now, Dean isn't sure what will. 

"You are still angry with me," Castiel observes, when Dean freezes.

"I'm still coming to work, aren't I?"

Castiel sighs. "I've tried to be patient, Dean. You're an unforgiving man." 

"Your point being?"

"My point is," Castiel adds, his eyes narrowing, "That if I can never, ever earn your forgiveness, tell me, and I'll stop trying." 

That brings Dean up short, makes him swallow the instinctive retort in his throat. As much as he doesn't like how Castiel got to this point, he has to admit that what he's done on Earth so far has been... good, to say the least. And if Castiel stops - if he decides to go back to Smiting the Unworthy instead - that's going to be a lot of blood on Dean's hands.

Besides, he isn't really sure if it's the wings, or taking out his temper on a hapless skinwalker, but he's a little less angry with Castiel than he was a few days ago. Still- 

"Take your time," Castiel suggests, when Dean bites down on his lower lip, thinking. 

"I wouldn't say 'never, ever'," Dean mumbles.

"You're lying to me." Dark clouds smooth briefly over the sapphire-clear sky of the Garden, above the glass of the greenhouse. "I've always tried so hard, Dean. Was it all a waste of time?"

"You want to learn how to start?" Dean shouts, over the rumble of thunder. "Make me human again! And put the souls back!"

"I can't, Dean," Castiel retorts flatly, his tone cutting sharp through the sudden roar of the downpour, that somehow drums down _through_ the glass ceiling, drenching them, and Dean flinches as lightning forks overhead, crackling down over the glass. 

"Can't, or won't?"

"I can't," Castiel repeats. "Do you know how Gods are usually made, Dean? Kali, and those other Gods that you met? Human belief is a force all of its own reckoning, wrought and powered by their souls. I wear the belief of millions of people. Even if I did return the souls, there'll be no difference. I am already far more powerful than I was after the ritual. I've merged the souls together and assimilated them, strengthened my vessel. I'm far more than I was before, and I can't undo it."

Dean blinks. "But..."

"And it is all thanks to you." Castiel breathes deep, closing his eyes, and the downpour and the clouds abruptly disappear. "You were right, about humanity, and the best way to gain their worship. So I will forgive you your tantrums. But if you ever want me to fulfil any more of your 'requests', you would do well to remember that devotion is going to have to be a two way street." 

Castiel disappears, all the crackling, smothering power in the air with him, and Dean sags back against the rail of the walkway, scrubbing his palm over his eyes. Well. There was no way he was going to be able to blame this particular development on Castiel entirely.

x

Castiel leaves him alone for a while, apparently to work on balancing the African ecosystem or something, and Dean alternates between keeping things running in Heaven, with the rosters, the many, many weird little maintenance tasks that angels did in fact have to do to the fabric of reality, resolving the occasional hiccup, and working on his baby. 

He's fitting a new wheel in place when Crowley finally turns up, looking hunted, crouching against the wall of the shed like he's sure that he shouldn't be there. 

"What do you want, Dean?" he mutters, and there's a growl beside him, from shoulder-height. Dean concentrates for a moment, then wishes he didn't. The inky-dark, vaguely dog-shaped monster next to Crowley is _gigantic_. And full of teeth. 

"Is that what hellhounds really look like?"

"Growly here's a big softy, really," Crowley bares his teeth. "He only eats people that I don't like."

The dog-shaped monster actually... wags its goddamned tail-shaped appendage when its master mentions its name, and huffs. It's cute, in a horrible way.

At the door, Sam glances between what he probably sees as a huge space of nothing and Crowley, tensing up. "What took you so long to answer the summons?"

"I've made... arrangements." Crowley muttered. "I couldn't just let anyone summon me up lately. Not with the New Management. Had to do some sniffing around, first. So what do you want?"

"How're you doing, Crowley?" Dean edges himself out from under the car, and Crowley actually takes a small step back, the dog rumbling softly in warning. 

"Ask your master," Crowley snaps, though he shrinks back against the hellhound. "I've done what he wanted, innit? I've kept up my part of the 'deal'. What more d'you guys want?"

"Crowley," Sam tries for reassuring, "We're not happy about the New Management either."

"Yeah?" Crowley arches both his eyebrows up so far that they nearly touch his fringe. "Your brother here's Number Two, Sam Winchester-"

"And do you know how I became 'Number Two', Crowley?" Dean shoots back. "These wings? They're made out of my _soul_. He cut it up, bit by bit, and reshaped it, and it hurt more than anything that was done to me in Hell." 

"Right." Crowley didn't look reassured. "I would have thought that you boys would have been all for the New Castiel. He's been working miracles all over your ugly little planet."

"For now. I think we need a contingency plan."

"Well. You two might think that it's fun to scheme, but we're way out of our league here, boys. It's not an angry archangel that we're dealing with, now. It's a fucking, full blown, all-guns-firing _deity_. So. If we're done here-"

"We could bind Death," Dean says quietly. "Like Lucifer did. But we'll need the spell."

Crowley rolls his eyes. "Dean. You're a pain in the arse. But let me tell you this. The last time God's favourite angel became more trouble than he was worth, what with rebelling and binding Death, he was stashed in a little box for centuries." 

"Didn't seem too hard to spring him out again," Dean quips, and Crowley snorts, raising his voice.

"Ha-bloody-ha. Leave me out of your revolution, boys. And don't call me again."

x

Dean's taking the Impala out for her first test-drive since she's been fixed up, and she works like a charm, no hiccups, no stutters. He's a few miles out from Bobby's when he's no longer alone in the car, and he yelps and nearly swerves off the asphalt. 

"Don't _do_ that," he tells Cas, aggrieved.

"You've been scheming behind my back," Castiel replies flatly, sitting at the passenger seat. "This isn't the first time that you and your brother have wanted to kill me. I find that very hurtful." 

Dean's hands clench tight on the wheel. "Cas-"

"I may not yet be omniscient, but I do have other means at my disposal. Crowley will not work for you further. And I've disposed of that recording of the spell that he provided you with." When Dean stiffens, Castiel adds, "I did not harm Bobby or Sam. I can still be merciful."

One nice side-effect of the angel mojo is a perfect memory. Dean doesn't really need the spell script since he's already read it, but it's going to be much harder now that Castiel is on to what they're doing. "It's just a contingency plan."

"For what, Dean?"

"In case you get bored of world peace."

"I am _God_ now," Castiel raises his voice only a fraction, and the road cracks and groans behind them, crumbling. "What gives you the right to judge me? To try and stop me?"

"People judge all the time, Cas," Dean pulls over and turns off the engine: they're a road hazard right now, and he wings are shifting and writhing at his back, wanting to come out. "Angels do too, apparently. Seems humans didn't invent job dissatisfaction."

"You are still my favourite, Dean." Castiel closes his eyes, his fingers twisted together in his lap. "Why can't anything be simple with you?"

"Well, for a start," Dean mutters, "Stop blaming everything that you've done on me. I never asked you to do this. I never wanted you to change."

"And we would have lost the war in Heaven. Raphael would have killed me. And he wouldn't have stopped with me. He'll have killed you too, and your brother, your friends, or worse, forced you to accept Michael. I couldn't allow that."

"You could have put the souls back once you were finished with him. Because, sure. Maybe I can understand wanting a little juice to get over the line. But everything you've done after that? You just got high on all that power. You've said that I'm your conscience? Then fucking _think_ , Cas. I'm telling you that you're wrong." 

"And I'm telling you that it's too late," Castiel retorts. "And that you can work with me to make this better." 

"I don't have a good track record for working with dicks," Dean grits out, too angry and too heart-sick to be anything but honest. "And you can't threaten me by deciding to go all thunder and lightning on the natives. Not now that you've seen how effective my way is. So you won't kill me, and you've got nothing on me. I'll help you run Heaven, because things are a fucking mess up there, but that's all you're ever going to get from me. You've crossed too many lines to get where you are. I won't forget that."

Castiel's eyes flash bright, and lightning whites out the sky above them, but even as Dean thinks that he's gone too far, that Castiel is going to destroy him, the not-angel abruptly calms down, glancing out of the passenger window. "Perhaps it would have been easier if I had simply remade you entirely. You would have loved me then, as my first masterpiece."

Fear runs an icy-cold finger down his spine, and Dean shrinks back, but Castiel shakes his head and sighs. "But that would have been pointless."

Castiel looks disconsolate, and Dean's wings actually _ache_ from it, physically, writhing and pulling against his back, but he bites down hard on his lip and forces the hated things to keep from manifesting, and eventually, Castiel disappears. 

Dean tries to count it as a win, but he's not too sure.

x

Castiel starts with the smiting after that, and Dean isn't entirely sure what to think of it. On one hand, the not-angel's working over dictators, human traffickers and terrorists; on the other hand, Dean was fairly sure that there's collateral damage. Sam starts with the puppy eyes, whenever Dean pops by to check on his little brother, and it's utterly, fucking, awkward. 

It's only when Castiel levels half of Pyongyang that Dean decides to get over himself.

There's a vast, perfect circle of springy turf centering where Chung-guyok used to be, carved into the city. At the edges of the circle, encroaching buildings have been sliced off at the boundary, like someone had taken a 3D model of the city and had cut a cylinder right through it.

There's nothing on the grass but Castiel, who's sitting cross-legged on the centre of it, leaning his face up against the pale sun, as though asleep. "I tried to talk to them," he states, when Dean surveys the hollowed city, numbed with shock. "They would not listen. Their people starve, while they throw lavish parties and fill staterooms with feasts that won't be eaten."

"You... you killed _everyone_?" 

"I unmade them," Castiel corrects, as though that makes a fucking difference.

"There had to be millions of people..." Dean trails off. There's nothing to say, really, and in a way, this is his fault. He wasn't there, and Castiel promptly went all the way off the reservation again. "You can't just _do_ something like this, Cas."

"There had to be a warning." Castiel says calmly, as he gets to his feet, then he frowns as Dean shuffles instinctively out of reach. "Dean." 

"Did you think that there's some sort of... some sort of acceptable _calculus_ to this? That you can just... just wipe a fucking _city_ off the map just to make a point?"

"I can, and I will, if it's necessary."

"The _innocents_ -"

"Are rewarded in Heaven." 

"You know what?" Dean throws up his hands. "Forget it. I thought... I don't know what I thought, coming out here to talk to you. There's no middle ground. We're through, Cas. And if you don't... if you don't kill me now, right now, I swear, I am going to find a way to unmake what you are and-"

"You're weeping," Castiel murmurs, his eyes widening a fraction, and Dean's vaguely startled to realize that he is, that his vision is blurring, he can't breathe, his wings are out, the feathers twisting and curling over his arms. "You mourn the deaths of people whom you've never known." There was a pause, then Castiel frowns. "You're mourning _me_."

"I guess I always thought that you could turn things around," Dean manages to stutter, "But this? This is it, Cas. I can't. I can't keep trying. You're not ever who I used to know."

Cool hands cup his cheeks, and Dean tries to jerk back, but Castiel's grip is immovable, and he ends up flapping awkwardly to get his balance back, as Castiel pulls him down to rest their foreheads together, ignoring how Dean growls and pushes at his shoulders. Eventually, Dean gives up and just tries to control his breathing instead, calm down each shaking breath and wavering sniff, and when he's calm again, Castiel murmurs, "Hide your wings, Dean. I will make amends," and then they're no longer alone. 

The empty field is abruptly filled with hundreds, _thousands_ of people, all milling around and staring at each other in shock. There's screams and pointing, as someone recognises Castiel, or maybe the tight huddle of people in black uniforms beside them, and Castiel lets Dean go, turns to address a pudgy, sweating man beside him in a language that Dean doesn't understand. The wings do, though - Castiel is more or less telling the man to feed his people, to govern well, _or else_ , and after a moment's hesitation, the man kneels.

It's like a ripple in a pond. The other people in black uniforms kneel too, and then it's like a shockwave, pushing outwards, as thousands of people go down on their knees, it's fucking insane, it's chaos, there're babies crying and some people have fainted where they were and... and Castiel only has eyes for him, big, sad eyes which used to be empty. God reaches over for his unresisting palm, and then they're on a beach somewhere tropical, white sand under his shoes and unbroken forest behind them, blue, blue skies merging with the sea. Dean's overwhelmed - his knees give out, and he sits down heavily on the sand, blinking.

Castiel had just brought back over a _million_ people without even batting a fucking _eyelash_.

It's right about then that Dean finally realizes how _stupid_ his 'contingency' plan was. How the hell could you have contingency plans for God?

"Was that acceptable?" Castiel asks hesitantly, like he's _Cas_ again, not something far beyond Dean's comprehension, and Dean gulps out a laugh that's brittle with mild hysteria, burying his face in his hands. He can feel his wings twisting out from wherever Cas had told them to stay, the feathers wrapping around him, curling over his belly and his thighs and his shoulders like a grotesque living blanket, and he lets them. 

He doesn't look back up until Castiel takes himself elsewhere.

x

Dean gathers all the materials from the spell script anyway, although he doesn't tell anyone, not even Sam, and he stashes everything in the boot of the Impala, then he goes to sit on one of the curves of the Chrysler building, just because he can. To keep everyone from panicking, he keeps himself invisible. Or at least, he hopes that he's invisible. 

His angel blade has jagged edges, and there's Enochian script running along the edges. It's a thing of beauty, unlike his hated wings, and on an impulse, he pulls one of his feathers over his lap and slices off the tip.

The pain is _excruciating_. 

Glass shatters, and Dean's dimly aware that his wings are screaming, or maybe he is, and then he's sliding and falling, out into space, trying to fly but nothing's listening and then he's landing abruptly on his back on soft grass at a much lower velocity. There's a palm set against his shoulder and another on his wing, and then the agony is gone, though Dean's shaking still from the aftershocks, his breath heaving into sobs as someone wrenches his blade from his grip and tosses it aside.

Castiel is straddling him, his hands fisted, and Dean's wings are fucking wrapped up his arms like sleeves, shifting and restless, as though blindly seeking comfort, and they don't listen when he tells them to flatten back down. Castiel frowns as Dean struggles and moans, then he speaks a word that Dean can't seem to hear, and the wings go quiet and fold back onto the grass.

"This isn't healthy, Dean," Castiel tells him, as he shifts off Dean's chest and sits down beside him. "Why did you do that?"

"Dunno," Dean shudders and curls, still hoarse. "That _hurt_."

"Of course it did. You sliced a piece off your _soul_ and burned it."

"Didn't know," Dean whispers, though he did, sort of, in his hindbrain. He knew.

"You wear responsibility far too seriously, my love," Castiel murmurs softly, with a tenderness that makes Dean grit his teeth until they ache, and he snarls and claws and punches as God draws him into his lap to cradle him like a child, tucking his head under his chin and his wings over his thighs, petting his flanks like he's soothing an animal, his feathers, until eventually Dean just stops fighting. 

When he sags into Castiel's arms, the new God sighs. "I know about the things that you've left in your car."

"Wouldn't surprise me." Dean tries for defiance but only manages a bitter sort of weariness.

"It's ironic," Castiel continues, as though he hasn't heard. "Now that I have all the power that I could ever want, I just seem to keep breaking the only thing that I've ever truly valued."

"Collateral damage from your 'any means necessary'," Dean whispers. He's tired and he can't ever sleep again, because angels don't sleep, and he wants nothing more than to wake up and stumble over to the bathroom and run into one of Castiel's accidental space invasions, an age and more away when all he ever had to worry about was the impending end of the world. 

Ha.

"I want to do better, Dean." Castiel tells him, hesitant and awkward again like the old Castiel. "I don't want your hatred. It hurts."

"You're a child," Dean replies, weary, and it's the sad truth of the matter, really; Castiel awakened to self-determination pretty late in life and without any real compass to it all other than a pair of fucked up hunters far too absorbed in each other's problems at the best of times, and it had probably screwed him up, somewhere, when he'd been blithely sucked into the Winchester Handbasket to Hell. 

"I know," Castiel murmurs wryly. "I'm learning. I want to learn."

The words _please_ and _second chances_ hang unspoken and thick in the air, and Dean gulps and turns his face up against Castiel's coat. The small voice preserved within him whispers to him about light in dark places, and Dean realizes all of a sudden that he's on a precipice, a crossroads, and he could go both ways, that there's a wide path where his feet are set, where he could stand firm and stubborn like he always has, push Castiel away and sunder Heaven, do what he's always known what to do, _fight_ , or-

-or he could take the other way, the gnarled one that he can't see, the dark, uncertain way, and learn, and try something different, and maybe it'll be capitulation, maybe it'll be surrender.

Or maybe it'll be progress. Because he knows, somehow, that it's going to be the harder path. Because it's easy to destroy things, but it's harder trying to change things for the better, and maybe this is what Sam had understood all along.

"Okay," Dean tentatively presses a palm over the hand that Castiel has buried in his wings, and although he doesn't realize it then, for the first time in all of Time's circles, _l'hosif-or_ steps off the cycle, and shakes existence itself as he does so.

x

He doesn't really remember how it starts, but he'd taken Castiel off 'to the side', aka deep out of earshot of all the people they've gathered to the Amazon Basin kumbaya-summit. They'd gone deep into the forest itself to keep Castiel from smiting the florid, sweating man who's heading the logger faction and who's showing a remarkable amount of balls in the face of a creature that could flatten a city in a heartbeat. 

Castiel had been mildly irritable, which wasn't really a good sign, all things considered, and then they'd argued, and he'd moved up from 'mildly' to 'very' and then they're snarling at each other like they'd used to before, whenever Dean pushed Castiel too far with the Michael business and the angel lost his considerable patience, and for a moment it's a rush, in a good way. It's crazy. He's arguing with _God_ and Castiel's turning red with anger, and nothing's being destroyed, there's not even a whisper of thunder in the sky and the ground isn't shaking, and Dean stops, starts, and begins to laugh.

Castiel shouts at him a little more, and then he hesitates when he realizes Dean's stopped listening altogether, and somehow, somewhere, Dean ends up pushed against a tree and they're kissing, mouth to mouth, tongues and all, and Castiel is _good_ at this for a virgin, he's slow and thorough and he licks into Dean's mouth like he can't get enough of him, he kisses like he's drowning in Dean and it's _incredible_.

"Where are your wings?" Dean asks, for the first time, blurts it out, really, and Castiel's smile is hard to parse. 

"I don't have them any longer," Castiel replies, matter-of-fact, though he averts his eyes and breathes out shakily when Dean curls his fingers into his unruly hair and pulls him in for another kiss.

They do it again, and again, and Dean's aware that his wings have unfolded, that they're plastered around every bit of Castiel that they can reach, goddamned sluts, and he's grinning into the next kiss with exhilaration rather than devolving into hatred, and the feathers are humming and whispering around them both.

It's not forgiveness by any means, and nothing's ever going to make Dean forget what Castiel has done to get where he has. It's a bridge, instead, of sorts, or a building, a foundation for something else, shoring up this gnarled, gray thing that they're constructing between them of the shadows and slips of everything that they'd once shared, making room for something of tenderness.

Eventually, Castiel pulls back regretfully - something about one of the chiefs of the NGOs having whacked Florid Guy with a fold-up chair - and pops off. Dean sinks against the tree, his feathers curling over his arms as he wreathes his fingers around them and shakes. Maybe he learns then to hate himself a little less. 

The next time they kiss, they're in Heaven, John Winchester's, in the house that his father built. His parents' memories of themselves are giggling to each other in the kitchen, painfully young and in love, and Dean had slunk off to the porch to sit in the creaky old swing to think of could-have-beens. Castiel had appeared to talk about something or other about Mount Sinai and this time, Dean had reached for him, and they'd ended up tumbled over the old, bleached timber and clutching at each other like schoolkids, rubbing blindly against each other until they're spent.

"Don't think that this is me giving you a pass," Dean tells Castiel, afterwards, when he's hoping to hell that his parents' souls hadn't come to check on the noise.

Castiel blinks at him, owlishly, then his lips curve faintly and his eyes crinkle at the edges. "Wouldn't dream of it," he drawls, and there's something a little more human there, now, Dean thinks, as his feathers flow between them both and dip against the mess trapped between their bellies. 

They're in the Impala, off a highway in a handy copse when Castiel goes down on him, a tight fit between Dean's knees and the steering wheel, there's elbows and knees everywhere, it seems, and it's messy and crazy with Castiel's mouth upon him and his dick pressed deep in the throat of a freaking _deity_. He doesn't last long, his fist pushed against his mouth to stifle his cries and Castiel's palms pushing his thighs as wide as they can spread. 

He'll be lying if he says he didn't feel a little self-disgust there, getting off down the throat of a fucking mass _murderer_ , but the thought's jumbled and tangled with knots of old memories and something new and raw that he doesn't touch without his chest clenching up. Dean complains when Castiel kisses him without cleaning up first and grumbles half-heartedly as the not-angel chuckles and nips at his jaw.

"This is fucked up," Dean notes, afterwards, when he gets Castiel off with a few unsteady jerks and his tongue pressed as far into Castiel's mouth as he could go.

"I know," Castiel agrees, painfully wry, his smile lopsided and stark in the streetlights. "But I'll take what I can get."

Dean thinks about the thunderbolt metal that he has in the boot, and all the crazy little ingredients that he has wrapped neatly in oilcloths beside it, or the mouldering packet of eggplant chips somewhere in the back passenger seat, and he exhales, rubs his hand up through his hair, lets the feathers tug at Castiel until the not-angel shifts up more comfortably against him. "How about you fuck me next," he states, and it's not a suggestion, not a gift, but something in the gray, new space that they've wrought between them, part denial-affection and part need-desire with a healthy sprinkle of something more akin to self-loathing, and when Castiel kisses him in response, biting, he melts upward to meet him.

x

"There has to be a limit to this," Castiel takes to saying, whenever Dean brings up something to his attention, but whenever Dean feels a vague sense of _tugging_ , like some unseen momentum trying to snap him back into place, in some vast scheme that he can barely touch the edges to, Castiel always capitulates. 

Someday God will draw a line in the sand, Dean thinks, as Castiel pops off, presumably to check on the melting ice cap as he'd been asked. He isn't really sure what he'll do then. He knows realistically that he can't expect Castiel to mother the world; he knows that a lot of his expectations stem from wanting Castiel to make amends. It's a little childish and small-minded, maybe, but whenever Dean starts to get ashamed of himself the little voice reminds him of what it had been like to be flayed alive and remade. Of the grass circle in Pyongyang. 

He has to remember the script and the things he has in the boot of his car, as much as he doesn't always want to, as much as the wings don't want to. They're a reminder that he, too, has a line that he can draw in the sand, and as long as he remembers this, Castiel will, as well. It's a fine balance that they're walking, and maybe it won't last. Maybe it isn't meant to. Maybe it will.

Dean breathes out and shakes the thought away, lying under a tree in an eternal afternoon, his wings spread wide against the grass, and he doesn't think about tomorrow as the leaves paint a lattice of sunlight over the palms that he holds up against the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> The concept of Gods being born from belief would probably be familiar to any long-term Pratchett reader. :) It's also the theme of Gaiman's American Gods, which I do recommend reading if you guys have the time. :D I felt that Kali and the others were pretty unexplained and underused in the episodes. :( 
> 
> Also, this fic seems to have ended up weird and tangled. I did originally intend for Dean to rebel, Lucifer-esque, but somehow he walked off script (damn you, Dean!) and yeah. 
> 
> Now back to mustering the effort to make the edits to previous fics. XD;; And work on WIPs.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [This Is How An Angel Cries](https://archiveofourown.org/works/696686) by [orange_8_hands](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands)




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